


Pinion

by AbigailMoment



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Crowley Whump (Good Omens), Harm to Animals, Hurt Crowley (Good Omens), Protective Aziraphale (Good Omens), Protective Crowley (Good Omens), Protectiveness, Torture, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-23
Updated: 2019-09-09
Packaged: 2020-07-12 05:18:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19940845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AbigailMoment/pseuds/AbigailMoment
Summary: Pinionnoun1.the outer part of a bird's wing including the flight feathers.verb1.tie or hold the arms or legs of (someone).2.cut off the pinion of (a wing or bird) to prevent flight.





	1. Chapter 1

Her hand shoots out, quick as a striking snake.

_ And he would know. _

The turtle dove barely has a moment to be afraid, and then it's in her hands.

It makes up for lost time as she spreads its feathers. It trembles and twitches, head twisting back and forth. So much fear in such a small body.

_ He finds the prolonged suffering unpleasant. Snakes don't play with their food. _

-

He was driving through central London when "Killer Queen" melted into surprising and unwelcome instructions.

-

"When you hear 'angel', what's the first thing you think of?" she asks.

_ Aziraphale, _ is the true answer. But truth has rarely been more deadly. He goes with his safer, second impulse:

"Insufferable." 

She laughs. A sound like silver bells. Funny, how they all have little pieces of what they once were. Traces of the past show up in the strangest places.

"Try again," she urges. "Think like a human. They hear angel. What do they think of?"

Crowley considers for a moment. He barely needs to. The answer is obvious.

"Wings."

She smiles. Her canines are too long.

-

She spreads the dove's wings wide like a magician displaying a hand of cards, just before the trick begins.

-

"I'm just not clear on what you're here for," he tells her. "If I could have just killed him I would have..."

"No no," she cuts him off. "No killing. Kill it, and it'll flutter up to Heaven and glide back down in another meat suit. This isn't about killing it. It's never been about killing them."

She leans forward and smiles, like she's sharing a secret. A joke just between them.

"It's about breaking them."

-

It was easy to escalate. Aziraphale was always "wily opponent" this and "cunning adversary" that. And Crowley had started doing it too. It made sense. Talking up the opposition made him look good. It wouldn't do to be thwarted by a middling to average enemy. Much better that they each be formidable.

Just...not too formidable.

Because then someone might think he needed help.

He had not expected Hell to decide he needed help.

But here he is in the Snowdon Aviary, waiting to meet the specialized agent that is going to come and help him with his angel problem.

Angel "problem."

He is going to have to figure out how to solve the problem of Hell's solution to his problem.

He arrives early. He wants to see his "help" before they see him. He feeds bits of bread to the birds and watches the crowds for signs of horns or insect parts in the passing populace.

He squints at a man in a lumpy trench-coat. Then he notices the woman beside him.

She isn't an overtly demonic woman: blond hair permed like a dandelion and height are her most striking features. But she is looking around in a "searching for someone she only knew by description" way. After examining her for a moment, he realizes there is something odd about her mouth.

He waves her over to his bench.

He's rarely regretted a decision more.

-

"Any imp can rip the wings off a cherub. This is about disassembly. You break apart what defines them."

"First you have to get the wings corporeal. That's actually simple. Focused trauma on the shoulder-blades. I like fire for that, but bludgeoning will work in a pinch."

"Once you have a fistful of feathers, you dislocate the bones from the back. There's some basic defense mechanisms that defuses. Stops the flow of grace. Makes everything easier to handle. Otherwise you'll burn yourself on a pinion."

"You do each feather individually. You strip the barbs while the quill is still in its skin. That way it feels the loss. Every bit of down is a bit of divinity that it hurts to lose. You start at the flight feathers and work your way up to the coverts."

"When you're down to bare skin, it gets a little bloody."

-

She offers what used to be a dove to Crowley, as if he might want a closer look.

The skeletal outlines of once-wings are garlanded with tendons and veins that she's somehow picked out particularly, re-wrapping them around the bones in a mockery of once-cohesive life.

There's not as much blood as there should be, he notes distantly. She did something to the arteries that went in and out of the wings.

The dove's eyes flicker.

Horribly. Impossibly. Miraculously.

It's still alive.

-

"So," she says, leaning back, still smiling. She always seems to be smiling. "Where's your angel?"

"My angel," he echoes, buying time for his brain to catch up with the enormity of this disaster as he makes sure the dove is definitely dead.

"That's what I'm here for." She spreads her hands. "All you have to do is point me in a direction. I'll do the rest. So where is it?"

"It?" his brain stumbles over the odd pronoun as it scrambles for ideas.

"The angel," she clarifies. "Tell me where the angel is."

"Scotland," he says. It's the first location that pops into his head that isn't a bookshop in London.

"Yeah?" she sounds surprised. "From your memos, I thought it was down here, fucking up your shit."

"He telecommutes," Crowley says, the second lie folds naturally off of the first. "It's the bloody twenty-first century. Everything's digital."

"Oh, okay," she accepts this unquestioningly. Crowley's the one who's been on earth for millennia, after all. "You know where in Scotland?"

Crowley just shakes his head.

"No worries. I'll cast around. Try and get a scent. You just keep him distracted and let me know if you can get me a location."

"Sure thing," Crowley rubs his face.

She smiles one last time, all mirth and fangs, and then she's gone.

He doesn't know what to do with the dove. He feels like he should do something with it.

He doesn't dare bring it back to life.

He doesn't want to see what the experience has done to it.


	2. Chapter 2

Crowley drives to clear his head.

The morning is jagged and jumbled in his mind. He remembers things out of order. He remembers singular images with perfect clarity. The dove. A smile with fangs. The moments between are blurred into unimportance.

This is panic. This is what panic feels like.

He cannot afford to panic right now.

He takes a turn at 90 mph and weaves between other cars going 30. The familiarity is soothing.

Sending Her to Scotland was a good start.

He should have sent Her to Australia.

Water under the bridge. Can't regret the past. Have to look towards the future.

What does he need to do next?

Find his angel.

-

Aziraphale insists on making tea, because Crowley is ‘in a state and clearly needs tea.’

Crowley has an impulse to scream about how now is not the time for tea and could you stop being English for ONE bloody second, but decides that would be counterproductive.

"We have to get you somewhere far away," he says as the kettle boils. He's pleased by how calm his voice sounds. "I was thinking Australia."

"Oh no." Aziraphale shakes his head. "I don't think so."

"All right. New Zealand? I know you don't want to go to America." Honestly, Crowley didn't care where it was as long as there was an ocean between Azirahpale and Her.

"No to all of them." Aziraphale pours water into the pot and sets it to steep on the table. "My dear, I can't run away from the forces of evil. That's not what one does."

Crowley stares at him for a moment.

"This isn't me, angel," he says slowly. "This is..."

He hesitates, thinking of the dove. Something inside of him recoils from the thought of making the extent of the threat clear to his friend. He doesn't want thoughts like that in his angel's head.

"...bad," he finishes lamely. "She's bad news. She's got this...thing she does. With birds. It's awful. Like human awful. Don't know where she got the imagination."

"I'm not a bird," Aziraphale says primly.

"I know. You're not. A bird," Crowley says, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "It was a fucking metaphor. It was a fucking power point presentation with props of what she's going to do to you."

"I will not seek a confrontation," Aziraphale promises. Crowley gives him a look halfway between incredulous and horrified that he was thinking about that. Aziraphale chooses to ignore it and continue: "But I am Heaven's representative on earth. I'm not going to stop my work here and leave. I understand the dangers that come with opposing Evil."

 _And now he's using capitalization,_ Crowley thinks. _It's all theory and principle to him._ He hadn't seen the tendons wrapped around bone.

"This isn't me," Crowley says, trying to put all the danger and fear and anxiety into his inflection so that some of it might penetrate his friend's thick skull.

"Nothing in this world is you, my dear," Aziraphale says patting his hand, clearly touched by Crowley's concern. "Have a cup of tea."

-

Three days later, she calls Crowley.

"Do you have a, uh, name?" Crowley starts with. "I forgot to ask."

And thinking of her as Her makes the entire situation more ominous and stressful.

"Lily," she says cheerfully. "And I've also got great news."

“Yeah?"

"I found a feather in Edinburgh."

Crowley's heart sinks into his stomach.

"Yeah?" he manages.

"It's old, couple centuries at least, but it's enough for me to get a scent."

"That's important, is it?" Crowley asks, leaning forward and rubbing his forehead.

"Oh yeah. It's how I do this. This one smells like, uh..."

There's a pause and the sound of breath.

"Carnations and tweed," she reports.

"Yeah, that's about right," Crowley admits.

"And we know it's staying on earth, not popping up and down like most of them do, so now it's just a matter of time."

"Great," says Crowley.

-

"I didn't know John Lewis had a crêperie," Aziraphale says brightly.

Crowley grunts noncommittally as he leads the angel down another aisle of the department store.

"I suppose it's inevitable," Aziraphale continues. "They keep tucking more and more things into these big stores. What do they call them now? Neighborhood stores? Everything stores? It's a bit overwhelming honestly."

Crowley takes a right, spots a low counter covered in glass vials, and makes a beeline towards it, trailing the angel.

"I do prefer the old ways," Aziraphale continues absently. "If you go into a bookstore, you can be reasonably sure of what you're getting into. Though these modern, larger ones have the queerest ideas about what constitutes 'books'. Amusing postcards are not books. Neither are stuffed cats. I suppose an argument can be made for the tapes with..."

"Here what do you think of this?" says Crowley.

Aziraphale winces and blinks as Crowley sprays him with Jo Malone London Orange Blossom.

-

A week later, there's another phone call. Lily is contrite.

"I'm sorry man. I don't know what's happening,” she says. “When I have a scent is usually doesn't take this long."

"Oh don't worry," Crowley reassures her. "I understand. Wily and cunning opponent, you know."

"Yeah I guess," she sighs. "I keep thinking I've almost got to it, then the smell changes."

"Maybe take a break?" Crowley suggests innocently. As innocently as a demon can do anything. "Recharge the old schnoz?"

"Nah. I still have old trails. I'm going to follow them and see where they're thickest. Maybe I can zero on on places it goes a lot, and we can do a stake out."

Crowley sighs in his mind, and then plasters a smile on his face so it doesn't show in his voice.

"Yeah great idea. Tell me when you think you've got a place. I can, you know, help out."

After the phone call, he tosses a small mound of perfume bottle boxes into his rubbish bin and goes browsing for more.


	3. Chapter 3

Crowley is in the bookshop trying to persuade Aziraphale to not run away so much, no, but to perhaps take an extended vacation. To Australia.

Then he sees Her outside.

Aziraphale makes a noise of flustered surprise as Crowley shoves him away from the window.

"What ever is the matter?" Aziraphale asks.

"Nothing!" Crowley yells, yanking the curtains closed and speed-walking out of the shop. "Go make tea and read something!"

-

Crowley catches up to Lily halfway down Greek street. He grabs her by the shoulder and yanks her around.

"What are you doing here?" he hisses.

"My job?" she retorts, startled. "What's got your fucking horns in a vise?"

"I thought you were going to TELL me when you FOUND a place."

She puts her hands up. "I don't have a place. I'm following one of its old trails."

"Fuck. Right," Crowley's body language relents from 'cobra about to strike' to 'adder feeling somewhat stupid for having made a scene.'

"Fuck," he reiterates. "All right. Trails. You should call me when you find a trail."

"What is this?" Lily asks, putting her hands on her hips. "Is this a nemesis thing? You want to be there when I find it?"

"Why do you call him 'it'?" Crowley can't help but snap.

"Why do you call it 'him'?" she retorts.

"Because gender," he snaps louder. "Lampposts are it. People are him." He pauses, and then adds because it's the 21st century: "Or her."

"Angels aren't people," Lily says.

Crowley's face twists into his disdainful 'the fuck you say' expression and he gestures from himself to her and back again to point out the hypocrisy of her statement.

"We became people when we Fell," Lily maintains. "We had one fucking thought for ourselves, and now we can fucking think for ourselves. They don't do that. They're the feathered tendrils of the sadistic cthulhu in the sky who invented botflies. Killing angels is like killing robots."

That justification smacks of trauma, but Crowley is so far away from being able to or interested in empathizing with the fanged psychopath murder lady.

"I am not drunk enough for this bullshit philosophy," he says. "Just stop calling him IT."

The pure venom of that command resonates in the air between them with an almost mystical quality. Lily's mouth snaps shut. She blinks and takes a step back.

Then a speculative expression creeps over her face.

"So that's why I couldn't find it," she says quietly, staring into his dark glasses.

Crowley takes a step back himself, feeling like he's made a mistake and wanting the distance. She takes two steps forward. The instinct to run kicks in a moment too late.

Her hands move, fast as a striking snake.

-

Aziraphale ignores the shouting, initially. This is London after all.

But then he recognizes one of the voices as Crowley, and he goes to the window, curious and concerned.

He watches the exchange with growing concern. Then the woman steps quite inappropriately close to Crowley and...

Aziraphale gasps and steps back from the window.

Oh. This is her. The woman that Crowley was so concerned about attacking Aziraphale.

And now she has Crowley.

Well, that is, just...no.

That is _unacceptable_.*

He closes the book he had been reading.

He walks with a swift but measured pace into the stacks of his shop.

He emerges mere minutes later with what he needs. He carefully packs everything in a worn, brown leather briefcase he acquired in 1941 and is very good for safely carrying books, regardless of its origins.

Aziraphale turns the sign in the window to "Closed" as he leaves. He stands on the London street for a moment.

Crowley and the woman are gone, but he can tell where. The trail of two demons moving through London stands out to him like black paint smeared across a Monet landscape.

He calls a cab.

-

*There is a great deal of nuance and emotion tied up in the word _unacceptable_ in Aziraphale's mind. Crowley would have expressed it as a screamed string of expletives. But Aziraphale is not Crowley. That's rather the point.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is very tiny--the next and final one will be much bigger!

Crowley wakes up because his back is on fire.

He screams and feathers unfurl. Black as ash. Crowding the small, ugly kitchenette he's in.

Lily switches off the butane kitchen torch with one hand and catches his wings under her other arm.

Crowley has a moment to discover that his hands are lashed to an eyebolt in the floor. Then something happens to his wings.

There's a nauseating pop and pain and a feeling of utter wrongness that goes past physical. Being in a body for six millennia involves a certain amount of physical suffering. But not to his _wings_.

"I'm not angry," he hears her say. "I'm just disappointed."

Then the awful aching crashes into agony as she yanks one dislocated wing to the side. He screams again.

"No. Check that. I'm angry."

He reaches out for a miracle. The roof collapsing. Imprecise, and it would hurt him, but not as much as she is hurting him.

The miracle fizzles into a slight rain of plaster. He can feel static in the space between where his bones should be and where they are. He vaguely remembers her talk in the aviary about the metaphysical reasons for dislocating the wings.

The memory is blasted from his mind as she yanks his wings in the other direction.

"It's not the whole 'traitor to our species' thing I'm mad about," she tells him mildly. "I don't care. You do you. It's just that I've been working really hard all month and I've been really frustrated and it turns out, this entire time, you've been playing me for a fool."

She brings his wings back to almost proper alignment and the pain ebbs from excruciating to a merely almost unbearable ache. She kneels down beside him, still keeping a hand on his wings to steady them. He knows if she lets go, it will hurt again.

"I'm a little curious about why," she says, level with him now. "But I'm more curious about where the angel is."

She leans forward. "Tell me where the angel is."

Crowley takes advantage of the moment of not-agony to take a deep breath and steady himself. It's perversely important to him that he express this correctly. He looks into her eyes. A bright golden glare.

"Fuck off."

Yeah. That came out pretty steady, given the circumstances. She stares at him incredulously.

"I am really not sure what your plan is here, dude," she says. "But okay. If that's the way you want to play it. Let me get the vegetable peeler."

She drops the wings, and their own weight hurts him, tendons and muscles, accustomed to the support of bone, twisting incorrectly. He starts to writhe, but writhing makes it hurt more.

-

Lily walks to the counter and starts searching through the drawers for knives of various sorts. She doesn’t have the equipment she’s accustomed to in Hell, but honestly, kitchen tools are almost as good.

She sets out what she's going to need. Vegetable peeler. Basting fork. A nice big workhorse of a knife. She's refilling the kitchen torch with butane when the doorbell rings. She looks up in surprise.

Oh, shit. The screaming. It's probably the neighbors. Or the police. She forgot that screaming is weird up here.

That's okay. She'll explain it away as sex.

She looks back at Crowley. He's figured out that he can relieve the pain by leaning back and propping his wings against the ground. She doesn't want him to figure out how to pop them back in--he might start doing inconvenient miracles. She walks over and wedges the wings between the kitchen table and a chair, forcing him to kneel back to keep from tearing muscle. That should keep him distracted while she handles whoever's at the door.

She walks out into the den, carefully shutting the door to the kitchen.

She makes sure she doesn't have any blood on her. She realizes she’s still carrying the butane torch. Whatever. She opens the door.

On the other side is a soft, blond, man-looking fellow wearing a suit. It smells like carnations and tweed.

"Hello," says the angel.

It throws a book at her.


	5. Chapter 5

The book hurts Lily MUCH more than books are supposed to.

It hits her spine-first in the forehead, which is unpleasant. But then there's a jagged lash of invisible force. Bright, holy apostrophes, digging into her face and chest. She staggers back.

"I am really quite put out by this entire situation," says the angel as he hefts another bible.

Aziraphale's collection of Infamous Bibles are not merely rare novelties. They are weapons. Normal, completely intact bibles, can be used to ward off Evil. Their presence is a solid wall of holy force that hellish influence can not pass through.

The imperfections of, for example, the Unrighteous Bible, which Aziraphale is currently holding, mean that that solid wall of force has gaps in it. Making it, practically speaking, less like a wall and more like a jagged latticework of holy spikes.

He tosses it to the left, where Lily had been trying to dart around the first bible to get at him. She's ready enough to jump back from it this time and doesn't get stabbed by holiness, but she's forced to retreat back towards the kitchen door.

"These books are very old you know, I don't like putting this much stress on them." Aziraphale noses the Wicked Bible forward very gently with his toe, forcing Lily further back while he fishes around in his bag for the Buggre Alle This Bible.

"But I have spent the last three weeks having myself and my shop sprayed with substances whose names are as indecipherable as they are cloying," Aziraphale continues. "And I have not appreciated it and I do not think it is good for the older manuscripts."

Back pressed against the kitchen door, Lily is facing down being crushed against it by divine spikes of weaponized misprints. Then she realizes she's still holding the butane kitchen torch.

She hefts it and triggers the fire just as Aziraphale finishes fishing out the Buggre Alle Bible. Aziraphale sees the bright blue flame and freezes.

"Throw it," Lily challenges, brandishing the tiny fire. "It might take me down, but I'm going to Fahrenheit 451 something before I go."

Aziraphale visibly blanches at the prospect. They stare at each other across the tiny living room, the Wicked Bible an invisible wall between them, the angel on one side with his book, the demon on the other with her butane torch. Long seconds pass in silent standoff.

Aziraphale breaks the silence: "Where is Crowley?"

Lily blinks, startled.

"Why do you care?" she asks, still brandishing the torch.

The question throws Aziraphale for a moment. He had not anticipated having to explain himself. After a little bit of deliberation he decides to go with: "I have it on good authority that he is imperiled by Evil forces."

"Well, yeah," concedes Lily, who has always considered herself an evil force and is definitely imperiling the man in the other room. "But why do YOU care?"

"It is my purpose on earth to stop such...imperilment," Aziraphale asserts loftily.

"You're here to rescue a demon?" Lily asks incredulously.

"Who is imperiled by Evil," Aziraphale maintains.

"You're...a tiny English man who fights by throwing books at people," Lily says slowly. "And you're here to rescue a demon."

Aziraphale frowns. "When when you consider how much average height has increased over the last two millennia I don’t think _tiny_ is an appropriate..."

"A demon that spent the last month giving me the run around all of England to protect you." It sounds like she’s slowly working her way towards a realization of some sort.

Aziraphale himself realizes that the situation he is currently in might put the Arrangement in considerable jeopardy. He draws the Buggre All Bible back against his chest, as if it were a talisman against danger.

"Well," he begins anxiously. "I cannot really speak to the activities of my cunning and wily opponent..."

"Oh my Satan, are you in love?"

Lily has taken a step forward, heedless of the danger represented by the bible just inches from her. Her eyes are bright and animated with sudden intense interest.

"Um," says Aziraphale.

"You've been alone on a planet for thousands of years." Lily takes another step forward, talking quickly now. "With only each other. Did you fall in love?"

"We are not..." begins Aziraphale.

"Oh my Satan. Are you married? Do you have BABIES?"

"Ah."

Lily takes another step forward and hits her head against the invisible and barbed wall of the Wicked Bible. She blesses furtively as she staggers back, rubbing her face. The pain seems to bring her back to a more even keel. She looks over at Aziraphale.

"No," she realizes. "That wouldn't work, would it?"

"No," says Aziraphale. "No it would not."

"You're ADORABLE," says Lily.

"Will you please let Crowley go?" asks Aziraphale.

-

If Crowley arches his back and stretches as far as the rope will let him, it keeps the pain away from unbearable and just at excruciating. But the position, and the pain, are exhausting, and sometimes his vision swims from blurry to black and he starts to fall. But when that happens the pain spikes back up to excruciating and wakes him up. He remains trapped in this tight, awful cycle for long minutes. He hears noise in the distance, but can't parse it.

Suddenly there's relief. A dip back from anguish to just a dull ache, and he can collapse against the ground. Someone's holding his wings again.

He sees Lily in his peripheral vision. He tenses and decides 'relief' is the wrong word.

"Hey," she says." "So I got Aziraphale in the den and..."

He lunges at her, suddenly heedless of the strain and pain, striking like a snake, and she only just catches him before his teeth, now fangs, sink into her throat.

The oven burners all ignite and the walls tremble with the force of frantic, aborted miracles. He tries as hard as he's ever tried anything, but he can't kill her.

The noise Crowley makes then is the sort of sound stars make when they die. Despair made manifest.

"Whoa." Lily says, almost awed, still holding Crowley's half-snake face at arm's length. Then she rushes to correct him: "No. No. I'm not hurting him. He's fine. He's making fucking tea. He's criticizing my tea collection."

It takes Crowley a moment to process what she just said. When he does, he's sure he's misunderstood.

"...what?"

Lily is silent for a moment. Then she says, softly: "So, it turns out you have the only good thing Heaven ever produced."

"I don't...have him," is all Crowley can think to say.

"Yeah, he's in denial about the fact you're a couple too. It's really cute."

Crowley has no idea how to respond to that. On a number of levels. He decides to confirm the most important thing:

"He's okay?"

"Oh my Satan. You are...yes. Yes, he's okay. And he's worried about you too. Um. Legitimately worried. I'm going to pop your wings back in. Don't zap me."

There is one last spark of really, relatively mild pain, and then the world is right again. Sore, and exhausted, and extremely confused, but right.

"What?" Crowley asks again. It seems the only appropriate thing to say.

"So you need to go out there and lovingly reunite with him," Lily says, brusque and businesslike, but somehow also filled with glee. "But if you go out there like this you'll upset him. You don't want to upset him, do you?"

"...no."

"Cool. I'll get concealer and some Tylenol."

-

"So where did you meet?" Lily is perched on the edge of the couch cushion.

"The Garden," Aziraphale tells her as he turns off the electric kettle and starts pouring. "I was guarding the East Gate and Crowley was, oh, you know the story."

"Yeah." Lily nods. "I wasn't there at the time, but I’ve heard it. Obviously. You met during the Temptation?"

"Just after, actually," Aziraphale recalls, handing Lily a cup of black Lipton tea. "On the wall I believe. We were on the wall, weren't we?"

Crowley just grunts. Aziraphale hands him a paper cup, full of hot tea. He accepts it mechanically.

"I'm sure we were on the wall," Aziraphale decides. "My wall. Because we could see the humans leaving. And we got to talking about it you see."

Aziraphale goes on to talk about the crucifixion, and the crusades, and Shakespeare, and Lily listens raptly. Occasionally asking questions. Mostly just letting the angel ramble. Everyone has tea. Crowley suspects he might have died, really died, in the other room, and that he has gone to neither Heaven nor Hell but some bewildering place beyond both of them.

"And he saved your books?" Lily exclaims.

"He did." Aziraphale smiles. "It was very kind."

"That's fantastic."

Gradually, Crowley begins to believe that he's still alive, because being dead doesn't generally ache this much.

"But look at me going on," says Aziraphale. "Why don't you tell me something about yourself, my dear."

"Oh, I'm not interesting." Lily waves the question away. "Just another troubleshooter for Hell. Simple as sin."

They talk a little more and Lily seems intent on avoiding mentioning that her original goal was to vivisect the person she is currently having tea with, which Crowley guesses is good, but he's honestly having some trouble concentrating on anything, and at one point finds himself listing dramatically to one side and is only saved from falling by an attentive angel.

"...is getting a bit late," Aziraphale is saying, helping Crowley to his feet. "He likes to sleep sometimes, you know."

"Neat," Lily says, as if Aziraphale had just described a novel hobby, like painting model trains. She gets up and walks them to the door. "Well, don't let me keep you."

She opens the door for them.

"Crowley, I'll let management know this won't work out. Cunning and wily opponent, you know?"

She winks.

"Cool," Crowley says. Being this close to her makes him want to scream and vomit.

They escape.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As usual, shipping saves the day. :)
> 
> While I had intended to end this about here, I realize this story needs one more chapter to be complete.
> 
> It is a rather delicate difficult chapter to write, though, as I am trying to earn my Aziraphale/Crowley tag without tumbling over into consummation that I really think is more appropriately left until after the events of the book/show.
> 
> So gonna do that in the next day or so.


	6. Chapter 6

As they make their way down the stairs Crowley leans heavily on the angel. Because otherwise he'd collapse.

"What just happened?" he murmurs.

"You were imperiled by Evil and I rescued you," Aziraphale tells him.

"Yeah," Crowley supposes that was a fair enough description of events.

He is suddenly was caught by the intense need to make sure Aziraphale understands the gravity of what they'd just emerged from.

"She's not actually...like...nice and...tea," he starts, words disjointed. "She..."

"I'm not stupid, my dear," Aziraphale says gently, with the sort of infinite understanding Crowley only ever gets from him.

"Okay," Crowley says, shoulders slumping. Not dejected, but relaxing. Glad they’re on the same page.

They make it down to the street. The Bentley is waiting at the corner. Aziraphale is not surprised to see it, despite the fact he’d last seen it parked outside of his bookshop. Obviously it had sensed its master needed it.

Its passenger door clicks open as they approach, and the car dips its frame down slightly on the suspension system to help Aziraphale maneuver Crowley into the passenger seat. It’s a concerning testament to the demon’s injuries that he doesn’t object to this arrangement.

Aziraphale gets behind the wheel and hesitates.

“Ah. Back to my shop, please?”

The Bentley accommodatingly turns on, shifts into drive, and starts navigating the London streets. Aziraphale nods happily and folds his hands on his lap.

“Angel?”

Aziraphale looks over at Crowley. “Yes?”

“What she was...going on about. The, ah, us being a couple.”

Aziraphale hesitates again, and refolds his hands on his lap in a slightly different configuration.

“Yes?” he says.

“You were pretty, ah, good at pretending that that we were…”

Crowley starts to talk with his hands like he sometimes does, but that pulls on his shoulder blades and that hurts so he stops.

“...that,” he finishes lamely.

“Well.” Aziraphale is looking down at his folded hands. ”I needed to save you.”

“Yeah. Yeah. That. Good job.” Crowley nods, and then regrets it. He needs to stop moving. He needs to stop talking.

The Bentley travels two blocks. Crowley starts talking again.

“When she told me you were in the den, I was, ah…”

“Yes?” Aziraphale looks over at him.

There is something bright and curious (eager?) in the angel’s eyes that makes Crowley’s words (confession?) wither on his tongue. Bashful isn’t an emotion that sit easily on him, it’s had so little practice perching.

“I was...put out, you know. Concerned.”

“Ah. Well.” Aziraphale adjusts his cravat despite it really not needing adjusting. “I was very concerned about you as well. It was a concerning situation.”

It feels like there’s an understatement competition going on.

“Yeah,” says Crowley.

“It’s a good thing we fooled her,” Aziraphale says brightly.

“Yeah,” says Crowley. “Fooled her.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so very fond of them.
> 
> At the moment, I feel neither bold nor self-assured enough to write more consummation than this.
> 
> I also, as I mentioned before, feel like the text of Good Omens is them realizing how much they love each other.
> 
> So I don't feel like I *could* write any more until after that story.
> 
> But it turns out fan fiction is addictive, so maybe I'll eventually make something else post-omens.
> 
> Anyway. If you like this, I do other writing stuff at [my website.](http://abigailcorfman.com/)
> 
> Cheers!


End file.
